Dave Castro has been on the ground at the SAP Center in San Jose, the home of the 2026 CrossFit Games, doing the unglamorous but consequential work of measuring out potential running courses. Captured by the official CrossFit Games channel, the director walked the venue's exterior with a measuring wheel and a host who pressed him on whether he intended to run one of the events himself. "That's a good question," Castro replied, before adding with a smile: "No, I'm not going to run one of the events."
The walk-through unfolded with the kind of detail that lets fans guess at what's coming. "We're going to start here cuz this is where basically the floor is," Castro said, gesturing to the spot just outside the arena bleachers. "Roughly, I'm going to measure — I'll make all my measurements from right here." The wheel ticked off the first stretch out of the venue to the early external markers.
The SAP Center's home identity as an NHL arena — usually the floor of the San Jose Sharks — surfaced in a comic exchange about the venue's signature shark head entrance. "The shark's cool. That's really cool," Castro said. "The shark's going to get out of it every game. Anyone ever hit a tooth? I don't know. Not yet. Not yet."
The measurement was directly relevant to the architecture of any potential workout. About 200 feet from the proposed start line, Castro and his contact noted a small climb wall — terrain that, as Castro put it, "will matter. Like, you know, during an event this is not nothing." The director continued pacing through to the venue's loading gate, which is wide enough to allow athletes to run out without bottleneck. "This is going to be great for if we have the opportunity or the need to run outside of the venue," Castro said. "So that's over 100 yards at this point."
Questions about closing roads for an event run were met with the bureaucratic reality of a city-owned space. "During that week we can close this off?" Castro asked. "We have to talk to the city, but okay, it can get tiring," his guide said. Castro's preferred southern route ran into a need for city permission, while the closer-in northern route was the easier of the two from a logistics standpoint.
By the time the wheel reached 600 feet, Castro had a mental sketch of the early stages of any potential running event. He converted in his head: "So, that means this is — if this is 600 feet, 300 feet is 100 yards. 600 feet is 200 yards. This would be a 400 turnaround point."
For Games-watchers, the walk-through provided the clearest hint yet that the 2026 Games will incorporate at least one significant outdoor running event. Castro, who has historically blended indoor arena drama with surprise outdoor work, looks to be locking in that classic balance for what he has already framed as a legacy-themed year.
